Tag: blueberry

This crumble is a delicious way to use up all these frozen blueberries you picked in the summer or bought in the store. It’s sweet, very full of blueberry flavour and so, so delicious when hot. You can always microwave it later if you have leftovers. But do you really think you’re going to have leftovers from this?

Nope.

Ingredients:

3 cups frozen blueberries

2 Tbsp corn flour

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup or around 120g butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

In a bowl, mix butter, sugar and flour until they are combined and form a crumble – like texture.

Separately place blueberries in a casserole dish and mix corn flour and lemon juice in with them. You’re hoping to coat them with the cornflour, so they don’t end up being juice in the ready crumble.

Once mixed, cover the blueberries with the crumble mixture, place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Sometimes, if the crumble still looks pale, I set the oven to grill function for the last five minutes, to see the crumble become golden.

Let the crumble set for 15 minutes before serving. That’s the idea anyway. We always eat it straight away while it’s still the consistency of a thick soup. Still delicious though!

A lot of the cheesecake recipes call for a lot of cream cheese. No wonder – it’s supposed to be cheesecake after all. This tends to get really expensive here in Norway though and to be honest, very heavy. So I came up with this, I suppose smoothie cake would probably be a better name, since it has a lot of cream and milk and just a bit of cream cheese. It’s still a delicious, stiff, cheesecakey foam with blueberries. I mean, you cannot go wrong with this. 🙂

This version is not very, very sweet, so do taste it before committing to this amount of sugar and increase if needed.

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp powdered gelatin

1/2 cup boiling water

1 cup single cream (around 20% fat)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk

125g / approximately 1/2 cup cream cheese

1 cup blueberries

biscuits – just enough to cover the bottom of the tray twice

1/4 cup butter

a couple of blackberries for decoration

Mix the gelatin powder with the water from the kettle until smooth. Let it cool but keep stirring occasionally to prevent it from setting in the glass.

In a bowl of an electric mixer place cream and start beating on medium speed.

Slowly add all the sugar, milk, cream cheese and blueberries at the end.

When everything is blended, let it rest and in the meantime break up the biscuits into small pieces.

You can use a food processor.

Melt the butter (I use the microwave for that but melting it gently over the stove top is certainly a better idea).

Add butter to the biscuit crumbs and stir.

Press the biscuit – butter mixture into the bottom of your spring pan.

Once the gelatin mixture is not hot anymore pour it into the milk/cheese mix and stir with a hand whisk to distribute evenly.

This recipe is just in time for blueberry season. If you’re like me, you will be coming home with a bucket or two of blueberries and making jams for the cold winter months. This is one way to do something different with your blueberries. The fruit leather is a rubbery, yummy snack that reminds me a little bit of chewing gum or maybe wine gums. Needless to say, I’m a fan and I hope you will become one too.

Ingredients:

2 cups blueberries

1 Tbsp applesauce

2 Tbsp strawberry jam or fresh strawberries blended

1/2 cup powdered sugar or more to taste

Blend your fruit in a food processor together with sugar.

Push the mixture through a sieve to make sure you achieve as much of a smooth texture as possible.

I actually took what was left in the sieve and blended it again in the food processor and then pushed through a sieve again.

I ended up with 3 Tablespoons of seeds etc.

Spread the fruit on a baking sheet, you’ll need a large baking tray for this.

Put in the oven and set for 50C/120F. This is the lowest my oven will go.

Dry like that for 12 hours or until the leather does not stain your finger anymore and it appears dry.

The leather should behave a bit like rubber and should be easy to peel off the paper.

Cut in strips and roll up. I roll them up together with the paper and each person peels it off the paper as they eat.

These are great for lunchboxes, kids parties or as a healthy snack.

I keep mine in the fridge until they are gone which is never longer than 2 weeks so I can’t tell you how long they would keep otherwise. 🙂

Blueberries are not in season yet and when they are I will be in the forest foraging for them, with a bucket. Thankfully though, frozen blueberries are always there to rescue me when I have a blueberry craving. In Norway, I am certainly not alone in having blueberry cravings and I am quite grateful that I live in a country where people understand my devotion for different kinds of berries. Norwegians are not afraid of black, white or red currants which are grown in gardens and made into jams and syrups, lingonberries which are a very popular sauce or jelly for meat, juniper berries as a spice and the list goes on. Thank you Norwegians, I can be berry-crazy with you.

So anyway, this idea came to me after I got this all steel skillet for Xmas last year and I liked it so much I wanted to make everything in it. So why not cake? A quick look at Pinterest showed me that it’s not a new idea and it’s doable. So off I went into the kitchen and put my favourite ingredients together to make this cake. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. My significant other says this is an amazing cake to have vanilla ice-cream but then he’s a bit of a sweet tooth.

Make sure your skillet is ok to go into the oven before you start. If you have an iron cast or all steel, you’re golden. If however, there is a plastic handle on your pan, you’ll have to consider making this recipe in another vessel. The skillet I have is 28cm/11 inches.

Ingredients:

2 cups frozen blueberries

100g/3.5 ounces white chocolate

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup applesauce (or use oil if you have no applesauce)

1/2 cup sugar

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

Check that your skillet fits in your oven and you can close it.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Place the skillet on the stove top and add blueberries. Put on low heat.

Break the chocolate into pieces and add to the skillet.

While the blueberries are slowly defrosting in the pan, make the rest of the recipe in a bowl.

Start with the wet ingredients.

In a mixing bowl combine eggs, milk, applesauce, vanilla and sugar and whisk until combined.

Once that is done, add flour, baking powder and salt and mix until just combined.

Do not whisk or continue mixing.

Switch the heat off under the pan, at this point blueberries should not have the frost on them and the chocolate should be soft when touched.

Gently layer the cake dough onto the blueberries and place the skillet inside the oven.

Admit it! Making a blue, fluffy sponge cake is one of the items on your bucket list. It must be!

This is just another one of my series of colourful cakes which were made without food dye.

And it’s delicious! I made quite a few jars of blueberry preserves last summer and they always have some blueberry juice on top so I decided to use it for this cake. You can, however skip this step and you’ll end up with a pretty normal looking and definitely awesome-tasting sponge cake. This is very unlike pound cake, much more aerated and lighter. Make it and see your guests surprised by the colour when they bite into it.

Ingredients:

5 eggs (divided into whites and yolks)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 Tbsp potato flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp distilled/white type vinegar

2 Tbsp blueberry juice (can be made by just pressing some defrosted blueberries through a sieve or by gathering the most watery part of a blueberry preserve)

a pinch of salt

For cream:

2 Tbsp cream cheese

1 Tbsp icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

In a bowl of an electric whisk start beating egg whites with a pinch of salt. Continue until the mixture is almost stiff and slowly add all the sugar until the mixture is completely stiff. At the last minute, add the blueberry juice. The mixture will turn a beautiful blue.

Now remove the bowl from the machine and use a spatula to carefully fold in the yolks and vanilla essence.

The mixture might turn pink where it comes in contact with vinegar.

In a separate container mix the all purpose flour with potato flour and baking powder. Add these dry ingredients to the cake mixture and fold again with a spatula. Fold delicately so that you don’t release the air that the mixture is now filled with. Mix slowly and only until there are no more dry pockets of flour. Add vinegar and mix again.

Pour the mixture over to a large, greased spring form and bake for 20 minutes.

Check with a skewer.

Put the cake out on a plate and let it cool. You will notice how the cake slowly breathes some of the air out but it will not collapse completely.

Once the cake cools, mix the two ingredients for cream with a spoon and decorate. As you can see I am somewhat of a cream minimalist. 🙂

Did you know you can use applesauce as a substitute for part of the oil or butter when baking?

I make a lot of my own applesauce, I try to get apples from people who don’t pick them from their trees etc. and even buy them when I have no choice. Later I process and cook them into applesauce together with their skins. Then I use it for so many things that I wonder how did I ever live without it. The biggest discovery for me though is how it can be used instead of fat in cakes. I substitute most of the fat without compromising the taste and adding vitamins and dietary fibre instead! Isn’t that just the ultimate hack?

And here’s the first recipe with applesauce I am publishing. You can, however use canola oil instead and the muffins will still be delicious.

Amazing Blueberry Core Goodness Muffins

Ingredients:

2 eggs

¼ cup applesauce

¼ cup canola oil

1 cup milk

1 ¾ cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ cup sugar

3 Tbsp blueberry jam OR blueberries from the freezer

Preheat the oven to 200C/390F.

Blend all of the ingredients except blueberries in a bowl. Do not overmix it so the muffins won’t be hard.

Once blended, pour ⅓ of the mixture into another bowl and blend with the blueberries.

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases and to each one of them pour a tablespoon of the white dough, then a tablespoon of the blueberry dough and top with the rest of the white mixture.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Enjoy! They are truly delicious, nice and moist inside. They disappear quickly though.

That’s why I have three muffin pans, for the times I want the muffins to stay un-devoured for more than 12 hours. 🙂